Dylan Voorhees ’98 Clears the Air in Maine

As clean energy project director for the
non-profit Natural Resources Council of Maine (nrcm.org), Dylan Voorhees ’98 spends most of his working hours advocating for — and often,
against — govern­ment policies that could impact the state’s air quality and
green­house gas emissions. Occasion­ally, though, he takes on other
assignments, such as doing skits in a polar bear costume to encourage NRCM
supporters to jump into a frigid Atlantic Ocean.

Funded largely by private foundation grants,
Augusta-based NRCM is the largest and one of the most influential envi­ronmental
advocacy organiza­tion in Maine, with a combined 12,000 dues-paying members and
supporters. To raise money and awareness about climate change, the nonprofit
organizes an annual polar bear plunge; since 2009 it has been held on December
31. Voorhees appeared in a promotional video for the event in a polar bear
costume which, accord­ing to the storyline, he refused to take off until NRCM
met its pledge goal for the fundraiser. While he did not actually wear the
costume until the goal was met, Voorhees, who has himself taken the icy dip
several times, acknowledges, “We know we can’t engage people without a bit of
humor. We protect the environment but we work by engaging real people.”

For Voorhees, such activi­ties represent “rare
but needed departures” from his more serious regular work of combat­ing global
warming pollution in Maine and clearing a path for renewable energy sources
such as wind power. On any given day, you can find Voorhees in his office
writing analyses of state bills or, when Maine’s part-time legislature is in
session, nearby at the State House lobbying law­makers. He also participates in
NRCM’s media campaigns. “It’s a really diverse and dynamic job that I love
because it involves working directly with laws and the legislators who make
them, but also organizing a whole ap­paratus of advocacy to support that over
time,” Voorhees says.

NRCM’s advocacy director, Pete Didisheim, lauds
Voorhees’ enthusiasm for all aspects of his job. “That’s what I look for in a
staffer — a willingness to do whatever it takes to advance our mission, and to
have fun in the process,” Didisheim says. “Whether in a polar bear suit or his
lobbying suit, Dylan will play the part needed to help promote a clean energy
agenda for Maine.”

Voorhees is especially proud of the key role he
and NRCM played in having Maine join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initia­tive in
2007. RGGI is an agree­ment among the New England and several Mid-Atlantic
states to collectively reduce carbon dioxide emissions from their power plants
through a cap-and-trade system. With support from other environmental groups,
Voorhees negotiated with local industries to produce the bill that determined
how Maine would implement the program. “Anytime you have environmental groups
and big industrial business groups coming to an agreement, it’s very helpful,
and legislators love it,” says Voorhees, who joined NRCM in 2006 upon
completing a master’s of public policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of
Government.

Dylan Voorhees ’98, shown here at the Kibby Wind Farm in Maine, advocated for sustainable energy sources. Natural Resources Council of MainWhen it comes to clean en­ergy practices,
Voorhees walks the walk, too — literally. After several years of going to work
via bicycle he now commutes by foot, having purchased a home blocks away from
NRCM’s office. He lives with Annie, his wife of 10 years, and their daughters,
ages 3 and 5.

Maine was not always on Voorhees’ radar,
however. As a teenager he aspired to become an archaeologist and was drawn by
the University’s an­thropology department as well as an overall “flavor and
pace of life” that was different from his rural Vermont upbringing. His fondest
memories of the College include rowing with the lightweight crew team three out
of his four years and the primatology courses he took with professor Marina
Cords, which, in retrospect, he cites as evidence of an ingrained inter­est in
the natural world.

“Growing up in Vermont and being outdoors hiking and skiing, I certainly have a love of the natural world,” says Voorhees. “I think there’s a sense in places like Vermont and Maine that our environment is not just a pretty thing around us to visit but is actually part of who we are and part of our economy.”

Hesitant to start graduate school right away, Voorhees took a job teaching eighth grade at The Gailer School, an independent institution where he attended high school. That experience changed his trajectory. “Teaching led me to public affairs and being interested in our civilization today more than our civilizations of 3,000 years ago,” he says.

Voorhees nonetheless continues to find his College education, especially the Core, relevant to his mission. “A lot of the work I do is about climate change, which is a long-term issue and relates to some fundamentals of how civilization will operate. And so, on top of the direct politics of it, appreciating the sweep of Western civilization, how we fit in and where we are headed are themes that are relevant to me still,” he says.

In that vein, Voorhees, who considers climate change “the defining issue of our time,” sees himself as making a small contribution to a much broader vision of “being able to have an economy and a culture and a civilization that can survive over the long term by behaving sustainably.”

Nathalie Alonso ’08, from Queens, is a freelance journalist and an editorial producer of LasMayores.com, Major League Baseball’s official Spanish language website. She also writes Student Spotlight for CCT.